Chapter 13 Skeletons
SKELETONS
BLADE
Something was wrong.
I pressed the binoculars tighter against my eyes and swept the compound for the fourth time.
The rocks we'd positioned behind were massive—gray granite boulders near the top of the hill, tall enough to crouch behind, wide enough to hide four men.
We'd driven past the compound on the main road, taken the first right turn before the gates, looped behind the hill out of the Wolves' sight line, parked the vehicles at the base, and climbed.
The grass was dry under my boots. The morning sun warm against my neck.
Below us, maybe six hundred yards east, the Iron Wolves compound spread across the flat basin like a wound.
And the wound was barely breathing.
"Two on the south perimeter." Ghost, beside me, binoculars pressed to his face. "Walking a patrol route. Sloppy. Overlapping sight lines."
"One on the north gate." Axel, further left. "Stationary. Rifle across his chest, but he's leaning against the wall. Not ready."
"Watch tower." Logan, on my right, his voice low and controlled despite the bandage Kai applied on his shoulder and the bruises ringing his throat. "One man. He's moving. Agitated."
I swung my binoculars to the tower. A wooden structure at the compound's northeast corner, twenty feet high, a platform with a corrugated metal roof.
The man on the platform was pacing. Back and forth, rifle in his hands, stopping every few seconds to scan the horizon with his own optics.
Even at six hundred yards, I recognized the build.
Massive. Shaved sides with a strip on top. The beard.
Spur.
He wasn't just agitated. He was angry. I could see it in the way he moved—the jerky stops, the way he turned and shouted down at someone below him.
His mouth moved. The words didn't carry the distance, but the body language was unmistakable: a man screaming at men who weren't performing to his standard.
I lowered the binoculars. Looked at the compound as a whole. Three patrol guards visible. Spur in the tower. Minimal vehicle movement. Two SUVs parked by the main building, from the convoy we chased an hour ago. The gate closed but unmanned from the outside.
Ghost mouthed what we were all thinking.
"Is that it? A skeleton crew?"
The question hung in the air between the four of us. Below, Declan had positioned himself between two rocks with the long rifle, his scope already trained on the compound. He hadn't spoken. He didn't need to. His scope was telling him the same thing our binoculars were.
I ran the possibilities. Either the Wolves were making themselves look small to draw us in—appearing weak, luring us onto their ground, with reinforcements hidden inside the buildings.
Or this was real. This was all of them. The men who'd come to the cattle operation, minus the ones we'd killed and the driver I'd put a bullet through, were the only Wolves left in this compound.
The driver's last words surfaced. The sentence he'd never finished.
Better leader than that grave—
Grave. Gravedigger. Victor Graves. President of the Iron Wolves. The man who'd led the Wolves through years of enforcement for corrupted federal agents, who'd been the muscle behind Cross and Holt and now Whitfield.
Was Gravedigger gone?
The pieces rearranged themselves in my mind. A skeleton crew. Spur screaming at the men he had left, the tension of a man holding together an operation that may have been coming apart. The convoy that had abandoned the rear van instead of fighting for it.
What if the rest of the Wolves weren't hiding inside? What if they were somewhere else entirely? What if Gravedigger had taken the bulk of his men and left Spur holding the compound with a skeleton force?
I pulled the encrypted phone from my jacket. Dialed Hawk. I switched to speaker and held it between the four of us.
Hawk picked up on the second ring. "Blade."
"We're on a hill six hundred yards from the Iron Wolves compound, outside Billings." I kept my voice low. "Hawk, I need to debrief you and I need permission to engage."
"Talk."
I gave him the short version. The cattle operation.
The firefight. The workers and Logan taken by the Wolves.
The pursuit, the van seizure, the workers recovered and currently being driven back to the cattle ranch by Kai and Rosa.
Irish and Logan both grazed by rounds but treated and mobile.
Six dead Wolves buried far from the operation by some of Axel's team, who were now en route to our position.
"Logan is with you." Hawk's voice was neutral. Processing.
"He is. He's been in this since the beginning and he can fight."
A pause. Then: "What are you seeing at the compound?"
"That's what I need your read on. We're counting a skeleton crew.
Three patrol guards, one man in the watchtower.
Minimal movement. The man in the tower is the same one who led the assault at the ranch—big, bearded, piercings.
A driver confirmed his name before I put him down.
Spur." I paused. "The driver also started to say something else.
'Better leader than that grave—' and I think he meant Gravedigger.
If Gravedigger has pulled out with his loyalists, this could be all that's left. "
"Or it's a trap." Hawk's voice didn't waver.
"Or it's a trap. But, Hawk—Kai and Rosa are driving the workers back to the cattle ranch. The workers are not in the compound. If there's ever a time to use the RPGs and grenades, it's now. No risk of civilian casualties. And if this is a real skeleton crew, we have the advantage."
Silence stretched through the phone. I could hear Hawk breathing. The measured rhythm of a man running calculations that weighed the lives of every person on this hill.
"If the rest of the Wolves are out there, this might be the window to destroy their compound before they return," I added. "Retaliation while they're scattered."
More silence.
"I trust you, Diego." Hawk's voice dropped.
The use of my real name deliberate—family, not club.
"If you think the play is there, take it.
But Declan stays as overwatch. Irish too—he's wounded, even if Kai's treated it.
Irish signals if he sees Wolves heading back to the compound.
If more bikes appear on that road, you pull out.
Your team is small. You have firepower but not numbers.
If the skeleton crew isn't real, retreat. Don't be a hero. Be smart."
"Copy."
"And Blade—"
A rifle shot cracked the sky.
The round slammed into the rock six inches from where my head had been a half-second earlier.
The impact sent a spray of granite dust and fragments into the air, sharp chips biting my cheek and the back of my hand.
I ducked left, pulling Logan down with me.
Ghost flattened against the boulder. Axel rolled behind the adjacent rock.
"What the hell was that?!" Hawk's voice crackled sharply through the speaker, a demand more than a question.
"We've been spotted." I pressed my back against the granite. My heart hammering. The dust still settling around us.
"Spur. Shooting from the watchtower." Declan's voice came, unhurried, steady. "I can take the sh—"
Another crack. The round hit the rock shielding Declan, close enough to spray fragments across his scope. He rolled sideways behind the granite, fast, flat. The ricochet sang into the empty air behind us. Declan couldn't return fire without exposing himself. Spur had their position locked.
"MOTHERFUCKER!" Irish's voice ripped across the hilltop. "Dec, you good?!"
"Positive. Don't move, Sean." Steady. Even after nearly swallowing a round.
More shots followed. Erratic bursts snapping past our position, higher this time, chewing into the rock face above us. Spur had given the order. Multiple shooters now. They were trying to pin us down.
"We're engaging." I steadied my voice through the rain of bullets cracking onto our rocky shields.
"If my instinct is right, this is a real skeleton crew.
Not more than the men they brought to the ranch.
Something is wrong inside the Wolves and we're going to find out what it is when we bring that compound down. "
"In case the Wolves are heading to Nevada," Hawk said, his voice tight and controlled, "I'll keep eyes on the compound here. We'll be ready."
"Copy. Blade out."
I pocketed the phone. Looked at Logan. He was crouched beside me, his back against the granite, the rifle Axel had given him braced against his right shoulder—the uninjured one. His face was calm. The blue eyes steady despite the bullets snapping overhead.
"Hand me an RPG."
Logan reached behind the boulder where we'd staged the heavy armament—the cache from the SUV's trunk that Hawk had been stockpiling since Holt's siege. He pulled the launcher free, checked the tube, and passed it to me.
The weight settled onto my shoulder. Familiar from the army, though heavier than I remembered.
I shifted position behind the boulder, finding a gap between the rocks to look through.
Spur's last shot had come from the tower platform—northeast corner, six hundred yards out. The trajectory was burned into my mind.
I twisted to the opposite side of the boulder from where Spur's first round had nearly taken my head. Rose into a half-crouch. Found the watchtower in the weapon's sight. The platform. The corrugated roof. The figure shooting beneath it.
I pulled the trigger.
The backblast kicked dirt and grass into a cloud behind me.
The rocket left the tube with a sound that was less an explosion and more a sustained rip—the air itself tearing open along the missile's path.
The projectile crossed six hundred yards in just over a second, a white contrail burning through the morning air.
It hit the watchtower in the upper section, dead center of the platform.